1. Field of the invention
The present invention relates to a substrate processing system, a substrate processing method and a storage medium. The substrate processing system has modules capable of holding a substrate. Module numbers indicating carrying order are assigned to the modules, respectively. Substrates are carried sequentially to the modules in the carrying order of increasing module number to subject the substrates to predetermined processes.
2. Description of the Related Art
A coating and developing system for forming a resist pattern on a substrate has a carrier block to which a substrate carrier, namely, a carrying container for carrying substrates, is delivered, a processing block including a resist film forming block for forming a resist film on a substrate and a developing block for processing a substrate processed by an exposure process, and an interface block connected to an exposure system. A structure mentioned in, for example, Patent document 1 is formed by stacking up a an antireflection film forming for forming an antireflection film on a substrate, a resist film forming block for forming a resist film on a substrate in a vertical arrangement and putting a developing block for processing a substrate by a developing process on the stack of the antireflection film and the resist film forming block.
A horizontal, straight carrying passage is formed in each block of such a coating and developing system, and processing modules are arranged on both sides of the carrying passage. Each block is provided with transfer modules for receiving a substrate and transfer modules for sending out a substrate processed by a series of processes in the block. Carrying order of carrying substrates to those modules is determined. A carrying means provided with two or more arms takes out a substrate from a preceding module, receives a substrate from a succeeding module and transfers the substrate taken out from the preceding module to the succeeding module. Thus, a substrate is transferred from the preceding module to the succeeding module in one carrying cycle. The carrying means repeats the carrying cycle. In some cases, the modules include a multimodule unit including three or more modules identified by the same module number and having the same processing function to enhance throughput.
Sometimes, some of the modules of the multimodule unit becomes unusable due to the malfunction or the maintenance of mechanisms. If some module becomes unusable while the coating and developing system is in operation, the unusable module needs to be excluded from a carrying schedule. If a substrate is held in the excluded, unusable module, it becomes a problem how to take out the substrate from the coating and developing system and how to incorporate the module into the carrying schedule when the excluded, unusable module becomes usable.
A technique mentioned in Patent document 2 transfers, when a module becomes unusable, a substrate held in a module preceding the unusable module to a buffer module. The number of buffer modules needed by this technique must be equal to the expected number of unusable modules. Nothing about measures to deal with a substrate held in the buffer module is mentioned in Patent document 2.    Patent document 1: JP-A 2009-099577    Patent document 1: JP-A 2006-203003